2007 Humana Festival Of New Americans Plays Announced

The 31st annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville will feature ten premieres by emerging and established playwrights, it was announced today by Marc Masterson, the company's artistic director. The festival, slated for February 25 - April 7, is acclaimed worldwide as America's flagship new-play festival.

For the 29th consecutive year, the festival is underwritten by The Humana Foundation. The philanthropic arm of Louisville, KY-based Humana Inc., The Humana Foundation nurtures charitable activities that foster healthy minds, bodies and spirits and promote community wellbeing.

Playwrights in the 2007 festival include a diverse array of writers in the American theatre. Full-length plays are Strike-Slip by Naomi Iizuka (Los Angeles, California), When Something Wonderful Ends by Sherry Kramer (Springfield, Missouri), dark play or stories for boys by Carlos Murillo (Chicago, Illinois), Batch: An American Bachelor/ette Party by Alice Tuan (Los Angeles, California), The As If Body Loop by Ken Weitzman (Atlanta, Georgia) and The Unseen by Craig Wright (Los Angeles, California).

The Open Road Anthology playwrights are Constance Congdon (Amherst, Massachusetts), Kia Corthron (New York City), Michael John Garcés (Los Angeles, California), Rolin Jones (Los Angeles, California), A. Rey Pamatmat (Jackson Heights, New York) and Kathryn Walat (New York City) with music by GrooveLily.

A bill of three 10-minute plays will be announced at a later date. Descriptions of the festival's lineup, along with playwright biographies, are as follows:

Strike-Slip, by Naomi Iizuka, Directed by Chay Yew

In the urban sprawl of Los Angeles, three diverse families each carry a dream, but the recent shooting creates an unexpected seismic shift that rocks each family's foundation. Faults that were once inactive or dormant suddenly appear and abruptly change the way they think about themselves, their community and their dream.

Naomi Iizuka's other plays include Anonymous, At the Vanishing Point (2004 Humana Festival), 36 Views, Language of Angels and Polaroid Stories (1997 Humana Festival). Her plays have been produced at Actors Theatre, The Public Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, GeVa Theatre Center, Huntington Theatre Company, The Children's Theatre Company and Brooklyn Academy of Music. Ms. lizuka is a member of New Dramatists and the recipient of an Alpert Award and Whiting Award.

When Something Wonderful Ends, by Sherry Kramer, Directed by Tom Moore, Produced in cooperation with InterAct Theatre Company

After the death of her mother, Sherry's family home goes up for sale. Sifting through memories of a seemingly simpler time as she packs up her baby-boom childhood, Sherry begins to connect the dots between her Barbie collection and America's place in the rest of the world. A touching, funny, deeply personal and daringly global one-woman, one-Barbie play.

Sherry Kramer's plays have been produced extensively here and abroad and include David's RedHaired Death, Things That Break, What A Man Weighs and The Wall of Water. She is a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts and McKnight Fellowships. She has received the Weissberger Playwriting Award, a New York Drama League Award and the Jane Chambers Playwriting Award.

Dark play or stories for boys, by Carlos Murillo, Directed by Michael John Garcés

A teenage boy's fictional Internet identity begins as a harmless game. But the game takes on a frightening reality when real emotion overtakes his online relationship. When Nick's virtual world collides with the real one, his fantasies of love, intimacy, obsession and betrayal spiral into consequences that lead him to the brink of death.

Carlos Murillo's plays have been produced and developed at venues throughout the country. He has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, a Playwrights' Center Jerome Fellowship (1995-96) and is a two-time winner of the National Latino Playwriting Award (1996 and 2006). He teaches at The Theatre School of DePaul University in Chicago.

Batch: An American Bachelor/ette Party, Conceived by Whit MacLaughlin and Alice Tuan with text by Alice Tuan. Created by New Paradise Laboratories, Directed by Whit MacLaughlin

Your friend is getting married. Wants to say goodbye to single life forever. You throw a party. A real bash. Does the sky break open? Do you summon the divine? Change? Or just get drunk? Speak now, friends, or forever hold your peace. This collaboration between New Paradise Laboratories and playwright Alice Tuan is the second in NPL's series examining rites of passage.

"Batch" will be performed site-specifically at The Connection, a downtown nightclub at 130 South Floyd St.

Alice Tuan has seen many phases in her plays: first Asian-American (because that is her face in the U.S.), then to hypertext (where the audience chooses the sequence of scenes), a stint in pornography (her most well-known play, Ajax (por nobody), onward with history (The Roaring Girle) and now pop and consumption (Batch).

Whit MacLaughlin is the Obie award-winning artistic director of Philadelphia's experimentalist New Paradise Laboratories. He has conceived, directed and designed ten original works with New Paradise Laboratories, which have performed at Ontological Theatre, PS122, Walker Art Center and The Andy Warhol Museum. Mr. MacLaughlin received a Pew Fellowship in performance art.

The As If Body Loop, by Ken Weitzman, Directed by Susan V. Booth

Aaron's sister Sarah is succumbing to a mysteriously icy illness and, to save her, his family must save"¦well"¦.all humankind, starting with one guy. With great humor, tremendous compassion and a good dose of mysticism, maybe the apocalypse can be kept at bay by a group of eccentrically dysfunctional, but loving, people.

Ken Weitzman's productions and development include Atlantic Theater Company, New York's Summer Play Festival, New York Stage and Film, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Mark Taper Forum, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Bay Area Playwrights Festival and Dad's Garage. His awards include a 2003 L. Arnold Weissberger Award for Arrangements. His commissions include Arena Stage and South Coast Repertory. He holds an M.F.A. from University of California, San Diego.

The Unseen, by Craig Wright, Directed by Marc Masterson

Imprisoned by a totalitarian regime and mercilessly tortured for unknown crimes, Wallace and Valdez live without hope of escape or release. When an enigmatic new prisoner arrives and begins communicating in code, both men develop new relationships to each other, their captors and themselves. A darkly humorous examination of faith in an uncertain world.

Craig Wright's plays include The Pavilion (Drama Desk nomination), Main Street, Orange Flower Water, Recent Tragic Events (American Theater Critics Association and Helen Hayes Award nominations), Molly's Delicious (Barrymore nomination), Melissa Arctic (Helen Hayes Award winner), Grace (Helen Hayes Award nomination) and Lady. He is currently writing a new play on commission from Hartford Stage.

The Open Road Anthology, by Constance Congdon, Kia Corthron, Michael John Garcés, Rolin Jones, A. Rey Pamatmat and Kathryn Walat, Music by GrooveLily, Directed by Will MacAdams

The call of the open road has reverberated since the founding of our nation: the wind in our hair and promise of a new life around the corner; or in the legacy of land taken, communities divided and the increasingly guarded borders behind which Americans drive. Comic and thought provoking, these writers examine how America's yearning for unfettered freedom resonates today and where it rings hollow.

Constance Congdon's Humana Festival plays include No Mercy (1986), Tales of the Lost Formicans (1989-National Endowment for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, Rockefeller Playwriting Award, a Guggenheim Award, Oppenheimer Award) and Back Story (2000). Tartuffe will be published in 2007 by Norton, co-edited with Virginia Scott, and Imaginary Invalid will premiere at A.C.T. this spring. Paradise Street was developed at New Harmony in 2006. Ms. Congdon is an Alumna of New Dramatists and playwriting professor at Amherst College.

Kia Corthron's plays have been produced by Actors Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, The Children's Theatre Company, Mark Taper Forum, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, The Royal Court Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Yale Repertory Theatre, Atlantic Theater Company, The Goodman Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club and Hartford Stage. Ms. Corthron is currently developing Tap the Leopard with Guthrie Theater, inspired by her trip to Liberia.

Michael John Garcés is the Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles and a resident playwright at New Dramatists. Previously at Actors Theatre he directed Finer Noble Gases by Adam Rapp (2002 Humana Festival) and When the Sea Drowns in Sand by Eduardo Machado (2001 Humana Festival).

Rolin Jones' play The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in drama. It received the 2006 Obie Award for Excellence in Playwriting. His ten-minute play, Sovereignty, was produced at the 2006 Humana Festival. He currently writes for Showtime's award-winning original series Weeds.

A. Rey Pamatmat's plays include Beautiful Day, DEVIANT, High/Limbo/High and New. His work has been presented at Mabou Mines, Playwrights Horizons, The Vortex Theater Company, Ma-Yi Theatre Company, HERE Festival and New Dramatists. Mr. Pamatmat is a resident playwright in Ma-Yi's Writers' Lab and a contributing editor for Big Queer Blog.

Kathryn Walat's plays include Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen (Women's Project in New York), Know Dog (Salvage Vanguard Theater), Johnny Hong Kong (Perishable Theatre) and Bleeding Kansas (upcoming, Hangar Theatre). Her work has been developed at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, New Georges, The Lark and Boston Theatre Works. Ms. Walat received her B.A. from Brown University and her M.F.A. from Yale Drama School.

By www.actorstheatre.org